It has become commonplace to repeat that "the Palestinian people are facing a dangerous phase", a phrase worn thin by repetition. Yet the Palestinian people today face the most dangerous phase of their life and struggle, as the Zionist system has moved beyond racism, occupation and apartheid to fascism in its practices, in a desperate effort to rescue the project of "settler-colonial replacement" from failure.
A year after a "so-called ceasefire" in Gaza that applied only to the Palestinian side, it has become a one-sided ceasefire, while Israeli bombardment continues daily and the occupation keeps expanding. Israel has returned to bombing hospitals, as happened at Nasser Hospital days ago, all in silence and under cover of the so-called "Peace Council", which has nothing to do with peace. This is accompanied by a suffocating siege that has left Gaza's dilapidated tents prey to floodwaters and its people victims of disease and suffering, as Israel continues to block most necessities of life, including medical equipment and engine, car and generator oils and water purification devices.
Everything happening in Gaza at the hands of the occupation, amid the silence of most of the official international community, has one goal: pushing more than two million Palestinians into an humanitarian, health and economic situation and daily risks of killing to force them to leave, and carrying out the ethnic cleansing for which an uninterrupted war of extermination paves the way. The more Gaza's people insist on steadfastness and remaining, and the forcibly displaced insist on returning, the more the fascist campaign of destruction and siege against them escalates.
The West Bank is witnessing a campaign no less dangerous, combining relentless incursions by the occupation army, arrests, beatings and abuse without restraint, systematic seizure and plunder of most of the West Bank and Jerusalem, and the blowing up and destruction of thousands of homes and facilities, along with an economic, educational and health siege through 1,300 military checkpoints and gates that have turned West Bank villages and cities into severed prisons and made every journey between them an unbearable ordeal. At the same time, thousands of captive prisoners are subjected to torture and abuse unmatched anywhere in the world.
All this is accompanied by a campaign of settler terrorism waged by terrorist gangs funded, organized and armed by the Israeli government itself, and its fascist ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir, under the sponsorship and support of Prime Minister Netanyahu and with the protection and backing of the occupation army itself, in an attempt to repeat the displacement and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Haganah, Stern, Lehi and Irgun gangs in 1948.
These attacks, ongoing at a rate of 30 a day, have destroyed people's property, their security and their ability to move and communicate to carry out their work and education and receive health services. They have destroyed the agricultural sector by preventing most farmers from harvesting their olives and controlling the largest part of agricultural land, or rather the largest part of the land not seized by Israel's apartheid wall over the years. One needs no analysis or statistics to realize that the aim of the repression in the West Bank, like that in Gaza, is terrorism and human and economic strangulation to push Palestinians to leave and implement the same ethnic cleansing plan.
How do the governments of the world and the region, and the United Nations, respond to all this brutal repression? By repeating the slogan of the "two-state solution", which has not influenced Israel by a fingernail, and by issuing statements of condemnation to which the Israeli government pays no heed. The Palestinian people need far more than that to strengthen their steadfastness, which will not and cannot be broken, if a minimum of respect for human rights and international law and concern for the interests of their own peoples remains. As events and experience have confirmed, the silence of states encouraged the crimes committed against the Palestinian people, emboldening Israel to commit more of them against the peoples of other countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Iran, to cause harm through its aggressive escalation to the Gulf Arab states and their economies, and to conspire against the water and economic security of Egypt and Sudan. When fascism's appetite for aggression and expansion is opened, it stops at no border and respects no red lines, and history offers enough lessons for those willing to learn.
On the other hand, the massive shift in public positions in favour of the Palestinians, as seen in Europe and the United States, helps move beyond traditional positions that have no impact toward real pressure on the entire Israeli system, not just on a few individuals. What is first expected is a shift by Arab and Islamic states, closest to the Palestinian people and most affected by the danger of Israeli aggression, toward: first, imposing a comprehensive boycott and sanctions on the Israeli system until it halts its attacks, assaults and siege on Gaza and the West Bank and puts an immediate end to settler terror gangs; second, cancelling the "Abrahamic" normalization agreements with the Israeli entity, which Israel exploited as a means to liquidate the Palestinian cause; and third, directing as much of their capabilities as possible to support Palestinian steadfastness on the ground and the ability to remain, economically, educationally and health-wise, and to protect Islamic and Christian holy sites.
What is required of European states and the European Union: first, halting all forms of military and intelligence support and cooperation and arms exports to and imports from Israel, a military cooperation whose continuers will be held accountable for participating in the ongoing war crime of extermination. Second, halting and cancelling the economic association agreement with Israel, which grants the latter broad economic and commercial privileges and whose second article, stipulating "respect for human rights and democratic principles and respect for these rights and principles", Israel violates every day, an article that represents a legal before an ethical basis for the agreement, supported by the petition signed by more than one million European citizens demanding its cancellation. Third, cancelling the scientific and technological cooperation agreement and the "Horizon" programme with Israel, an agreement that brings Israel hundreds of millions of dollars annually to fund research, a significant part of which is directed to developing weapons used against Palestinians and the peoples of the region. Fourth, subjecting relations with Israel and its institutions to Europe's own human rights, anti-racism and anti-terrorism laws, and ending the de facto immunity granted to Israel regarding international law and international humanitarian law.
As for the United States, whose administration supports Israel militarily and allies with it, the escalation of popular pressure that created a new reality during the recent midterm elections in the Senate and Congress represents an opportunity to restrict support directed to Israel, which has become a direct cause, by the admission of US President Trump and his vice president JD Vance, of their party's election loss. Regarding Russia and China, which explicitly support the rights of the Palestinian people and their just cause, it is useful to conduct a deep review of all forms of economic and investment relations with Israel to put an end to its policies that destroy the prospects of the solutions both countries call for.
Before the Palestinian people, their living forces and the solidarity movements with them remains the task of formulating a strategy to deal with the Indian government's bias toward Israel and its military cooperation with it. As a reminder, 24% of the weapons that reached Israel during the war of extermination came from or through India, especially since there is broad popular support within India's opposition parties for the Palestinian cause, based on India's long history of support, since Gandhi's days, for the Palestinian people's struggle.
The victory of the Palestinian people's struggle requires two fundamental factors: the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on the ground in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, Gaza and the Palestinian interior, and the growing effectiveness of solidarity movements and the imposition of sanctions and boycott on the settler-colonial system. These two factors can repeat the experience of bringing down the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.
